The present invention relates to networks including personal computers and intelligent workstations, and more specifically to a remote API processing method using network protocols.
An application primary interface (API) is a collection of commands which enable a programmer to obtain services from an application. One type of API is a command which points to a block of memory where another API request or requests are stored.
Networks typically include personal computers or intelligent workstations which are connected to a server using special software and hardware. The server may handle tasks, such as electronic mail and electronic faxing for the network.
Personal computers and intelligent workstations have limited memory resources. For example, personal computers that include Intel-compatible processors suffer from a conventional memory ceiling of 640 KBytes. When such personal computers employ a Microsoft-compatible Disk Operating System (DOS), the conventional memory must be shared by the operating system, the local area network (LAN) software, the wide area network (WAN) software, and the end user applications.
In a retail environment, the personal computers or terminals may also not be equipped or capable of being equipped with enough extended memory. Such personal computers are not capable of executing applications that require large amounts of extended memory.
The traditional network answer to the limited resources of a client terminal has been "work sharing" in which a server and a client terminal share processing tasks for network-based applications.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method for networking client terminals in which memory-intensive client tasks, such as API requests, are off-loaded to a server.